


A Torrent Carving Inexorably at a Stone

by Zaniida



Series: Creepyfest 2020 [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, Creepyfest, Dissociation, Gen, No Escape, torture (offscreen)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:34:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27279580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida
Summary: They've been in the cages for weeks now.  Their captor hasn't even bothered to talk to them; he's too busy making Loki scream.Prompts:In the Hands of the Enemy (Prompt #2), Caged (#4), Torture (#31), "My Wayor the Highway" (except worse) (#3) -- and more.
Series: Creepyfest 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947157
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	A Torrent Carving Inexorably at a Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [black_feather_fiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_feather_fiction/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Scream and Cry](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/707206) by (anonymous). 



> I'm setting this vaguely around _Infinity War_ but with an implied Canon Divergence in which Loki is alive and doesn't get captured until just before the fic starts, and Thanos managed to grab **Tony, Steve, Nat, and Clint** at the same time.
> 
> Also, the Inspired By link isn't something I was thinking about while writing, but hey, it's a fic I'm well aware of that I've already recorded a podfic for and that involves Loki screaming endlessly while the Avengers fall apart, so it's almost certainly a big part of what my brain was drawing from to come up with this piece. (Plus, it's a nice little fic to indulge in during Creepyfest, so go read it!)
> 
> Remember, it _is_ Creepyfest; happy endings are unlikely. And I mean, this _is_ Thanos. But you never know.
> 
> The non-core Whump Prompts (and general content warnings) are in the End Note.

The Avengers get unceremoniously dumped into cages, while Loki gets led away, looking pale and somber but striding confidently, gracefully, alongside the musclebound guards.

Hours later, the screams begin.

At first, Tony tries to convince himself that it’s all just a trick, an intimidation tactic; after all, aren’t their captors supposed to be Loki’s allies?

But then, he’d failed to bring them the Tesseract, failed to conquer Earth’s defenses, and that had led to the destruction of their entire army and what had looked to be a mothership. Their leader is pretty pissed, and now fate has brought him the culprit, or at least a handy scapegoat. Along with more than half of the team that thwarted his invasion.

Yeah, those screams might just be real.

The Hulk had battered Loki into the floor, but barely managed to make the guy _whimper_. Tony tries not to guess at exactly how much effort it takes to wring screams out of a Norse god.

Long hours pass, as Loki’s screams echo around the room, changing pitch and intensity but rarely stopping for long.

While Steve pits his strength against the bars, Tony snipes at him. He’s trying to stay pissed; it’s one of his default modes, easy to slip into and energizing.

(A lot of other modes are far less helpful.)

Nat’s been systematically checking their surroundings for weaknesses, for assets.

Clint seems to have retreated into some deep part of himself, completely unresponsive even when Tony gets right in his face.

And Loki’s screams just won’t **_stop_**.

Thanks to Steve’s perfect brain keeping perfect time, they’re aware of the precise moment when hours turn to days, and when days become a week. Then two.

At least Thor and Bruce are still out there, somewhere. And Thor’s got a spaceship.

Of course, Thor’s tiny ship and the strength of the Hulk against the guy who’s already beaten _both_. Not exactly the horse you wanna bet on.

And that’s even assuming they can last that long.

The guards drop off food at irregular schedules, almost as if it’s an afterthought; it’s weird and slimy and disgusting, but at least it doesn’t seem to be poisoned. They relieve themselves in the corner of their cages, and after a while the smell gets to be a background detail, eye-watering but unimportant.

They sleep in shifts, so that there’s always two of them awake. Not that sleep comes easily, what with the endless shrieks of pain; they’ve all got bags under the eyes. When Tony sleeps, he’s back in the desert staring at his own name, or on his sofa having the phone pulled from his unresisting hand, or falling through space with the awareness of how small and insignificant his death will be… only, before long, his nightmares start to feel like a way to escape, and he tries to cling to them rather than wake up.

Clint seems worse off; when he sleeps, he wakes up shaking, sometimes whimpering, and Nat calms him down by whispering things at him in Russian.

He won’t talk to any of them. Hasn’t since they got captured.

Steve tries to talk to the guards; Tony tries to threaten the guards. It gets them nowhere, except that Steve gets zapped by their shock-stick a couple times.

A few weeks ago, Tony might have found that amusing. Cathartic. Now he stares, dead-eyed, at Steve’s body, willing him to get up again.

It takes a while.

Three weeks, and their captor hasn’t even bothered to tell them what he wants. If not for the food, he might as well have forgotten that they exist. Or perhaps this is his way of getting back at them, leaving them to rot in cages until they’re every bit as insane as Loki was. A warning to others who might try to cross him.

The uncertainty eats at them, but they don’t discuss it; dehydration makes any words scrape across raw throats.

Tony finds it harder to focus on anything other than a constant replay of the worst moments in his life. It’s like his brain is trying to rank them, trying to find something, anything, that was worse than this. Pain was fleeting, the sonic taser wore off, he could stop the drowning at any time by giving in, but _this_ —there’s nothing here to work with.

He’d managed to trick the leader of a terrorist cell in the middle of the desert, but that actually required him to _make contact with_ that leader. And even if this guy finally gets done with Loki and moves on to the rest of them… Tony’s not at all confident that he could manage to trick the vicious space villain who took charge of a Norse god and orchestrated the invasion of an entire planet from halfway across the galaxy.

But he’d like to have the _chance_. He’s always managed to get out, get free, to make his captors pay, but… to be honest, a fair amount of that was due to luck. Luck gave him the opportunity, and he seized it with both hands.

He doesn’t like relying on luck. But there’s little else to grab hold of, here.

Then, three and a half weeks in, Loki’s screams finally stop.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Whump Prompts:**  
>  Overall Situation: What's a Whumpee Gotta Do to Get Some Sleep Around Here? (#23), Nightmares (Alt #10)
> 
> Loki: They Look So Pretty When They Bleed (#10), Wound Reveal (#30)
> 
> Clint: Altered State (Alt #6)
> 
>  **Additional Content Warnings:** They're kept in cages for weeks, and given nowhere else to relieve themselves. It gets pretty gross.
> 
> I might end up adding a couple more Whump prompts; there's a couple I'm borderline wondering about. But I think that brings me up to 21 out of the 31 Whumptober prompts, leaving me with just 10 to go (in two days!). But as I've used 7 Alt prompts, it's possible I've only got 3 to go. We'll see how much I can accomplish last-minute!


End file.
